Sermon

This is the sermon I gave at Rob & Anna's wedding.

[Note: this is the version of the sermon I prepared on the computer. I did a bunch of editing on the printout before I actually gave it, so its a little different than what I said]

Hi. I'm going to begin my sermon with a parable.

A group of scientists put some monkeys into a cage. Near its roof, accesible only via a single stairway, they kept bunches of bannanas, replacing them whenever they got old. When any of the monkeys tried to climb up to eat the bannanas, it was blasted with a high powered jet of frigid water until it gave up. The monkeys were fed boring lab food, much less tasty than the unreachable bannanas. Now the monkeys, being our ancestors, were capable of being taught, at least if long blasts of frigid water were used. After a while, none of them tried to go up the stairway, and no one was soaked by the scientists. Then, the monkeys in the cage were slowly replaced, one by one, over a period of weeks. When each new monkey entered the cage, he would, of course, go towards the bananas. But the other monkeys, looking out for the newcomers well-being, and not wanting any of the spray to get on them, would restrain him, insisting that he should stay away. They never said why, their language being insufficient for the task, but they made it clear that it was a Bad Thing.

Eventually, every single one of the original monkeys had been replaced. Not a single monkey in the cage had ever seen anyone soaked, they knew only that the bannanas were forbidden. A new monkey was placed into this cage, and he naturally went towards the staircase. He was restrained, and told to stay away. "Why?", he asked, reasonably. The other monkeys replied "Thats just the way things are done around here, boy."

[Ed: A version of this parable with an amusing and important difference can be found in B.F.Skinner's Walden Two]

I'd like you to keep that in the back of your minds as I continue.

Lets think for a moment about how this wedding would look to someone not from our generation or culture. Lots of young 'uns, wearing black. Isn't black for funerals? Barbed wire centerpieces [sarcastically]. But yet to us, or pretty much anyone else living in LA, it seems pretty normal. Does this mean that one perspective is right or wrong? Well, not really. We have chosen to give a different meaning than the conventional one to the color of black, we are using it to celebrate life instead of death. Symbols contain the meaning that you give them, and a flexible mind should be willing to accept alternative meanings. We are here to witness and give our support to a marriage, to celebrate the forming of a bond, and while a bystander might doubt our fashion sense, he could not doubt our sincerity. This is a wedding, no matter what colors we wear.

Moving a little farther afield, after graduating from Mudd, I realized that, for me, theory had gotten boring. I was tired of learning. I wanted to apply and use my knowledge, and so I found a new vocation, one deeply rooted in mathematics. It is true that much of the mathematics consists of fairly simple probability and some elementary game theory, but it is still mathematics, and anyone who has tried to apply book knowledge in new and complicated situations knows that reality can be difficult to fit into formulas. It is a field which is ripe for mathematical modeling and extensive computer analysis, one which has a few theorists but few accepted theories. I am speaking, with complete and utter sincerity, about the game of poker. I meet many more math majors and computer scientists at the tables than you might expect. There are a lot of people who don't believe in poker's mathematical underpinnings, and that is just fine, because I take their money. Gambling is a legitimate mathematical enterprise - the science of probability was, in fact, invented in order to understand it. Poker is math, even if written with chips on the felt instead of pencil on the page.

There are other non-standard applications of simple mathematics. Which is harder, developing groundbreaking new theories, or teaching math to smart people? I would guess the former. But what about teaching mathematics to disadvantaged, uneducated children who don't even want to learn it? I'm not so sure it isn't more difficult than working towards a Fields medal. There, only the implacable disinterest of the universe is against you. In a modern school, a teacher may have to fight the active hatred of his students for the material. Are there medals for this? Not that I've heard of. Are people who do it, and do it well, revered in society, written about in books, profiled in Time Magazine? They are not, because teaching is considered, by society, a normal, unglamorous occupation, not a challenge for a keen mathematical mind. I disagree.

Hopefully, y'all being smart people, you are beginning to sense a trend in my examples. Put simply, I believe that most things consist of two distinct parts: that which is their basic nature, and the arbitrary conventions of society, and I think it is crucially important to be able to recognize the difference. While there were real reasons for the monkeys to stay away from the stairway, they acted without knowing those reasons, which is usually a bad idea. Without periodically testing that convention, how could they know whether it was still valid? Perhaps it was based on real facts, or perhaps those facts had changed. Unfortunately it is often difficult to make this distinction, especially in areas which we have culturally instilled opinions about. What rights should women have in the workplace? Most of the "differences" which our culture says exists between the genders is pure hogwash, and so, for the most part, women should have the same rights in the workplace as men. But a few of those differences are real. Women get pregnant, and men don't. This is a simple, biological fact. A woman who bears a child will, depending on her job and how well her pregnancy goes, be away from work for anywhere from days to months. A man who fathers a child is unable to work for at most the duration of conception - and if he telecommutes, perhaps not even that. How should this be taken into account in an employment contract? I have no idea, that is a difficult question, but the point is, this is a valid concern, not an arbitrary social convention.

You can see how important this distinction is, whether it be in our public policy or our private lives. Most of us went to Harvey Mudd College, which means that we began to follow one of the standard paths of college->job, college->grad school->job, or college->grad school->teach at college and never have to reach the real world. Those paths are ok, and one of the reasons that they are standard is that there are logical, positive benefits for following them. But another reason they are standard is that they are what society says we
should do, and this is not a good reason. Fortunately, we learn far more than academics here. Hopefully, we learn independence, we learn self-reliance, and we learn the ability to discern what is and is not important. I urge each and every one of you to think about this distinction, and to apply this dichotomy to everything, including and most especially, the direction of your life. I am not saying that you should not stick to the straight and narrow, but if you do, do it for the right reasons, because it is right for you, not because you lack the courage or imagination to diverge. You must understand the
difference between what is substance and what is style, what is reality and what is convention, which goals are arbitrary and which are important. Otherwise you may work hard to buy a big house, only to realize you have no one to share it with, become president of a company that doesn't do anything you care bout, or go to college and leave with nothing more than a piece of paper.

Last Modified: March, 2000
Patri Friedman / patri@izzy.com